List of chess players

This list of chess players includes people who are primarily known as chess players and have an article on the English Wikipedia.

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Famous people connected with chess

The people in this list are famous in other areas of activity, but are known to have played chess, or have declared an interest in the game, or created works of art and literature in which the game is prominently featured.

Fictional characters

The people in this list are characters in fictional media depicted playing chess.

Computers

Deep Blue, the IBM chess playing computer, was victorious in a 1997 match against then-world champion Garry Kasparov.
* Deep Thought, an earlier version of Deep Blue, won many computer chess championships.
Deep Fritz achieved a draw in the 2002 match, "Brains in Bahrain", against Vladimir Kramnik. A variant, X3D Fritz, drew against Kasparov in 2004, and the version Deep Fritz 10 defeated the world champion Vladimir Kramnik in 2006.
Houdini (chess) Since the release of version 1.5 on 15 December 2010, it has taken the top spot in every rating list that includes it.
Hydra (chess) is a very strong machine which uses custom parallel hardware.
Junior is the winner of the 2006 World Computer Chess Championship, its third victory at this event.
Rybka is an engine. As of December 2006, Rybka has topped all chess engine rating lists and won the 2007 WCCC.
Shredder is another strong program, having won the WCCC twice.